Rough sailing ahead for taxpayers without initiative and referendum

Andrew Mills/The Star-LedgerAudience members question Gov. Chris Christie during a town hall meeting about his property tax cap plan at Roxbury Township Municipal Complex in Morris County June 10.

As I have noted on occasion, I am a cheapskate. So is my sailing buddy, who has appeared in several of my columns. Last year, I described how the Captain and I got prime Springsteen tickets at the Meadowlands from a scalper for a mere $15 each. We also beat the $25 parking fee by bringing bicycles.

We do this for the fun of it. But the other day, the Captain got some news that’s going to force him to be a real tightwad for as long as he’s anchored to New Jersey.

I heard about his bad luck when I showed up at a boatyard in Brick Township where his scow was laid up awaiting some ding repair, a profession in which I became learned before descending into daily journalism.

As I unloaded my tools and beer, the Captain told me of the tax bill he’d received. He had already been paying about $12,000 a year, an amount I considered excessive for a house on a quarter-acre lot. As of July 1, that tax bill will double, he told me.

Perhaps there was some mistake. Nope. When I got Brick mayor Steve Acropolis on the phone the next day, he told me the town had gone through a reassessment and people who live close to the water had been hit really hard. State aid had been cut as well. There are reports of big tax hikes all over the state as third-quarter bills go out.

It certainly wasn’t the mayor’s fault. Acropolis was one of several Shore mayors who met with Chris Christie right after the November election. They pointed out to the governor-elect that towns like Brick and neighboring Toms River had given him his biggest pluralities and should be rewarded with more state aid.

Christie responded, “I’m not going to give Newark’s money to Toms River.” He didn’t. Once in office, Christie endorsed a school-funding formula that preserved property-tax relief for the cities while starving suburbs like Brick, which lost 17 percent of its school aid.

The governor tried to compensate by pushing “Proposition 2½” as a long-term cure for high property taxes. The Democrats promptly deep-sixed that plan. But even if it went into effect next year as Christie hoped, the Captain and others already stuck with high tax bills would get no reductions — just a 2.5 percent cap on future hikes.

Their only hope is that Christie will keep another campaign promise — that he will implement initiative-and-referendum in New Jersey. Imagine for a second New Jersey had implemented I-and-R back during the Progressive Era, when many Western states did.

By now, homeowners might have risen up and implemented a reform like California’s Proposition 13. If we had Prop. 13 here, anyone buying a house would have the comfort of knowing that the tax bill would be capped at 1 percent of home value and could rise only in tiny increments. Under that formula, the tax bill on the Captain’s quarters would have been set at about $6,000 when he built the place six years ago. The assessment could increase by a maximum of 2 percent a year, not the 100 percent he was just hit with.

We could have that here in Jersey if state Sen. Steve Oroho got his way. Oroho, a Republican from Sussex County, is sponsoring a bill that would give New Jerseyans the power of initiative and referendum.

At a budget hearing in Trenton Wednesday, Oroho pointed out the flaws of the legislative 2.9 percent property-tax cap the Democrats have offered in place of Christie’s constitutional cap. He noted that the cap has the same exemptions as the current legislative cap, permitting taxes to rise for increased utility bills, employee health benefits and so on.

“If you’re on Social Security or a pension, does the town give you exemptions when your insurance or utility bills rise?” he asked.

I-and-R would give people a chance to finally get a real property-tax cap, Oroho said. “It just makes sense to let people vote and see if they want to pay taxes for the services,” he said.

It does indeed. But Oroho’s bill is dead in the water, if I may employ a sailing term. The Captain and I may be cheapskates, but until we get I-and-R our elected officials will keep spending like drunken sailors.